One Last Time
by Dr.HarleenQ
Summary: what if before his regeneration, the tenth Doctor didn't visit Rose on New Year's Eve? What if instead he visited her the night before he lost her to the ghosts? And tells her everything he never could. One-Shot: Rose x Ten I do not own Doctor Who. These characters are simply being borrowed for my creative processes. All characters belong to Russell T Davies.


SUMMARY: what if before his regeneration, the tenth Doctor didn't visit Rose on New Year's Eve? What if instead he visited her the night before he lost her to the ghosts? And tells her everything he never could. One-Shot: Rose x Ten

I do not own Doctor Who. These characters are simply being borrowed for my creative processes. All characters belong to Russell T Davies.

One Last Time

This was wrong. Stupid. Dangerous. But he didn't care. He is a dying man with one last wish.

Her.

Rose Tyler. His pink and yellow brilliant human. Brilliant, brave, and beautiful. His bad wolf.

So he doesn't listen when the TARDIS groans and moans and tries to resist his coordinates. He ignores the regeneration energy surging through him and the pain that accompanies it. He is going to hold it off long enough for her. His Rose.

One last time. He is going to be brilliant with her one last time.

It is extremely dangerous for a TARDIS to land inside of another, as it risks a dimensional breach that could wreck reality.

So the TARDIS moans and groans and tries to refuse. But the Doctor simply ignores.

He can do this. For Rose, he can do anything. He reassures himself silently as he forces the TARDIS to materialize. Engines quiet.

The doctor steps out of one TARDIS and into the next. It's surreal and unwelcoming. Both TARDISes know he shouldn't be here. But he can sense her and he's dying and he needs this. He needs his pink and yellow bad wolf to hold his hand and give him peace in the way only she can.

He makes his way to her room while the other him sleeps soundly at the end of the hall. The silence is deafening and only the echo of two broken hearts fill his ears.

The door to her room opens, and there she is. Asleep and angelic and oh so content. Her face relaxed, her lips slightly apart, and he can hear her heart beating in rhythm with his.

Of course she fell asleep with the side table lantern on. Typical Rose.

How peaceful. How innocent she is to what is to come. Rose and a slightly younger more hopeful him just saved the world from becoming a little girl's drawings. He lit the Olympic torch and they had celebratory chips for dinner. She had been so brilliant. She saved the day. Not him. Her. His Rose.

But she's going to wake up and there are going to be ghosts and it'll be the first time he loses her.

The Doctor walks over and sits on the edge of her bed, just staring. She's so utterly beautiful and it's both such a painful and loving sight to see her again. For the last time.

The thought never leaves his mind. This is the last time he'll ever see Rose Marion Tyler. It makes this moment so crucial, so precious. He ingrains her into his brain. How she looks, how she smells, her breathing pattern.

He will never let himself forget Rose Tyler.

As if he ever could.

"Doctor?"

Her eyes flutter open. Beautiful and brown and filled with so much love and life. And this is the last time he'll look into them.

"You were the first face this face saw, you know." The Doctor says with a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes.

"What are you goin on about? It's a little late for this yeah?" Rose says. Half yawning. Her eyes are hooded and there are sleep boogies in the corners, but it only adds to her complex and human beauty.

He could go on about how there's technically no time in the vortex, so it can't really be "a little late", but this moment is too important to waste on technicalities.

"Oh Rose Tyler." He says while tucking a strand of golden hair behind her ear. He makes a mental note that her hair is made of silk.

"Doctor? Are you alright?" She was always the one concerned for him. Who was going to look after him now?

"Don't worry about me. I'm always alright Rose." He cups her cheek and allows his thumb to ghost along her jaw line, and she leans into it because she, too, knows how bloody perfect it is when they touch.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

He needs to apologize. Because he hates himself. Because she comes back to him, but he's selfish and scared and oh so in love that he pushes her away and pawns her off to another version of himself.

He always pushes them away.

"Doctor. You're startin to scare me." Rose removes his hand from her face, only to intertwine it with hers. She sits up on the bed, now eye level with him. "Please tell me what's goin on."

"You never get to hear me say it."

She had asked him to say it on that beach. But he couldn't answer. Not when he was about to leave her again. He couldn't.

"Say what?" The confusion in her eyes is evident. She's worried for him. Rightfully so. He is dying after all.

"You deserved to hear me say it Rose. But I don't. I don't because I'm a daft old man and I'm afraid."

She leans in, and squeezes his hand.

"What are you afraid of? What aren't you saying? You aren't makin any sense."

"Not yet at least." He responds with a slight chuckle. "I wanted you so badly to refuse him and stay with me."

She could of broken his resolve, it was thin and weak. He would have taken her back and away from that universe. Away from his copy. She just had to tell him no.

"The one time that you stubborn human chose to listen to me was the one time I didn't want you to."

But of course she had listened. She trusted him and he refused to tell her what the other him did. By doing that he gave her an offer she couldn't refuse.

"You deserve to hear it from me. At least once."

Now she's just staring at him. Unsure what to say. He doesn't blame her. After all, she has yet to live any of it.

"Rose Tyler, I love you."

And he pulls her into the kiss that was stolen from him on that beach. She freezes at first. Startled and unsure, but very quickly melts into him and responds.

Rose Tyler had been waiting two years for this moment. The doctor over nine hundred years. It's passionate and hard and full of so much emotion. Teeth clash, and lips bruise as they try to find their rhythm. It's messy and awkward and oh so perfect because they're messy and awkward and they're whole relationship has been messy and awkward.

He sees their whole relationship play back in his head. Leather, big ears, and angry. The end of the world. Bad wolf. Not ginger. A Christmas invasion. New New York. Werewolves. The Wire. And so much more. It's as if he's falling in love with her all over again.

He never wants it to end. For the first time since bad wolf bay his hearts feel whole, and everything feels at ease. It's as if nothing exists beyond kissing Rose Tyler. Like kissing her would prevent the inevitable. Maybe it would. Maybe if his lips never parted from hers...

The kiss breaks, and they're breathless, foreheads pressed together, and eyes locked on one another. It's almost telepathic. As if she sees into him and understands everything. Rose Tyler, the only person who read him like an open book.

Then there's pain. A contracting pain filled with gold energy. Against his chest, spreading through his body, telling him that time's up. His time with Rose has forever come to an end and that realization hurts him more than any regeneration.

The Doctor. Without Rose Tyler. In the TARDIS. As fate doomed them.

He gives her a smile that reflects both deep love and absolutely emptiness. His eyes mist over and he wonders if it's possible to regenerate right here, right now, from his hearts shattering.

"Goodbye Rose Tyler. We had the best of times." And so he puts his fingers along her temples and wipes her memory of this night because she can't remember it. Because she has to go to the ghosts and come back and save the all the universes and be ripped away again to another Doctor. Because it's destiny that Rose Tyler break his hearts. It reminds him vaguely of Donna, but he pushes the thought away. He can only mourn for one right now.

He needs to leave. If he doesn't leave now, then he'll steal her away with him. It takes a lot of self control to lose the women you love three times and he didn't have much left. Rose's future does not involve him.

Rose Tyler will be happy. He has to believe she'll be happy.

He tucks her unconscious body back into bed, and kisses her forehead before turning off the side table lantern, because God knows she always falls asleep with it on.

He takes one last lingering look in the dark before the pain contracts in his chest and reminds him of his situation once more.

The first and last face that this face saw.

He retreats from her room, the inner pain growing now as he feels himself die. He walks back into the TARDIS who weeps for him, and sets back off into the time vortex.

He can feel it. Any second now. He could care less about being ginger or slim and foxy. He just hopes his next form won't forget her. He wants to always love Rose Tyler.

His body glows with regeneration energy, but all he sees are pink and yellow.

"I don't want to go."

END


End file.
